What the toll tells…

Can’t Win For Losing

A shadow drops over him, too dark to be a cloud moving across the sun, and he cracks an eye open to find Cougar above him–not standing and staring down but a whole lot closer, like, about to straddle him and make him embarrass himself close.

Can’t Win For Losing

Jensen flops belly down on the grass and wriggles up to the edge of the ridge until he’s shoulder to shoulder with Cougar. “Hi,” he says, when Cougar pulls an eye away from the scope. “I brought binoculars.”

Cougar doesn’t need a spotter–he can calculate drop rates and trajectory in his sleep–it’s Jensen who needs eyes on the targets. With the noonday sun reflecting off glassy pool water and a long row of metal roofing it’s a tough shot even for Coug, but Jensen’s already got plans for Pooch’s money.

“I’m rooting for you,” he says, “and not just because Tom Berenger gives me a chubby.” Poolside, the targets are getting comfy, snacking on whatever it is that rodents in this part of the world like to eat. If it’s four down before they all scatter, Jensen’s in luck; if not, it’s no Christmas for Whoville. “Two hundred bucks riding on you, buddy, don’t let me down.”

Cougar’s finger slips to the trigger, and the curl of his mouth says When have I ever let you down? He breathes out, his body going still but not stiff. He’s sun-warmed and lethal, a snake in the grass, and it’s the hottest fucking thing Jensen has ever seen.

Jensen licks his lips and catches himself staring at the limber stretch of Cougar’s body. “I don’t want this to be another Honduras,” he says, though this is down-time so there’s really no comparison. He grins when Cougar shrugs off the concern and again when the scent of leather makes it past the smell of baked earth and drying grasses. If reruns of Sniper gives him wood, the thought of snuggling up to Cougar’s hat practically has him jizzing in his pants. As mama always said, you always want what you can’t have. He props the binoculars between his fingertips, a shiver running through him when Cougar breathes out again in anticipation of the shot.

A heartbeat later the rifle bucks.

A cartridge spits out next to Jensen and the bolt slides home a second time. It’s chaos by the pool as expected, fuzzy little bodies running like hell to squeeze through cracks in the foundation or scurry up into the trees. When the echoing crack of the second shot fades away, it’s not four but six little corpses laid out on the bleached concrete and Jensen has no fucking idea how Cougar can pull that kind of shit off. He bites back on a whoop; tonight he is going to sleep on a bed of Pooch’s cash.

“Cougar, you’re a straight-up wizard. I could kiss you. Right here, no lie. Full on the mouth, maybe with a little bit of tongue,” Jensen skitters away from the edge of the ridge, rolling onto his back to stare at the wide expanse of sky while Cougar pops his rifle off the bipod. It’s a perfect day, textbook bright blue sky scattered with puffy clouds waiting to be named. A few seconds staring into infinite space gives him vertigo, and he closes his eyes to watch the after images of clouds float around on the inside of his eyelids.

A shadow drops over him, too dark to be a cloud moving across the sun, and he cracks an eye open to find Cougar above him–not standing and staring down but a whole lot closer, like, about to straddle him and make him embarrass himself close.

“Two hundred says you won’t.”

Since they met, Jensen has been able to read Cougar pretty well. All of the guys had eventually learned to interpret Cougar’s silences, but Jensen could feel them out from the start. Maybe it comes from being a twin and growing up speaking a language that isn’t built on words, or maybe it’s just that Cougar lets him close the way some of the others don’t. Whatever it is that allows him to read between the lines, he’s gone blind, deaf, and dumb now.

“Two hundred dollars?” It’s not the question he means to ask, which is more in the realm of Are you shitting me? or Do you seriously want to get all up in this?

Cougar prowls the rest of the way over him, arms bracketing his shoulders and a knee–oh jesus fuck, a goddamn knee–nudging between his legs. There are ways to misinterpret this, he’s sure of it, and glances over to the rifle laying alongside him. The two spent cartridges catch the sun. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

“Am I?”

The brim of Cougar’s hat nudges Jensen’s forehead and dark strands of hair slip down to brush like feathers against his cheek. The press of Cougar’s thigh against his own is settling swiftly into about to feel his boner territory, and Jensen squeezes his eyes shut, wishing he could roshambo himself because the devil on his shoulder is whispering go for it, moron and he very rarely ever listens to the other, smarter little voice. Jensen risks looking Cougar straight in the eye, and there’s doubt there, dark and trembling on the edges of his stupidly long lashes.

“You don’t think I would?” Jensen asks, trying to tease out more of a response. He swallows thickly and risks setting a hand to Cougar’s side, tentative and ready to snatch it right back. It doesn’t even earn him a shiver. He can’t say he hasn’t thought about this–that would be a bald-faced lie–because he’s thought about it all right, and though he’s spanked it to fantasies of all the guys at one time or another, the deposits Cougar has made to his bank are fucking exponential.

And it’s not like Cougar’s looking at him like he really thinks Jensen won’t do it, or like he doesn’t want Jensen to do it. “You’re on,” Jensen says, and the cocky, self-assured smile that Cougar gives him is obscene in and of itself. His thumb twitches, makes a more measured pass against the swell of Cougar’s ribs under his tee, and Jensen swallows again, trying to work past the desert dryness that has taken over his throat. He’s hyper aware of every part of their bodies that touch, senses on overload like he’s turned into Superman, able to feel the warp and weft of the cotton slithering beneath his fingertips and hear the heartbeat thudding through the press of his palm.

He tips his head, trying to work up the nerve, and there’s something like impatience in the soft sigh of Cougar’s exhale. And then it takes a moment to register but the brim of Cougar’s hat is skidding down Jensen’s shirtfront in a way that most definitely isn’t a retreat but an advance. His stomach quivers, muscles twitching in spasms as fingers slide the hem of his shirt up and Jensen can’t see Cougar’s mouth hovering near his bare skin, but he can feel warm breath tickling against the scatter of hair on his belly.

“Oh shit, oh shit.” Jensen can’t stop the words from falling out of him like a mantra, no more than he can resist going up on one elbow to get a better view, or keep from biting his lip hard when Cougar takes off the fucking hat and reaches up with a solemn look to plunk it down on top of his head. Jensen adjusts it almost immediately, brim tipping up to block the sun and more importantly to give him a pure and unrestricted line of sight to Cougar’s hands on his fly. “This is more than a kiss.”

“Technically it’s not,” Cougar murmurs. Jensen’s pretty sure that’s what he heard, and it’s backed up by the sharp slant of Cougar’s shoulders. Muscle flexes under dusty cotton, the angles of his shoulderblades rising as sharp as the grassy ridge beneath them. Jensen’s mesmerized, watching mutely as Cougar pulls his dick out, palms the length of it and goes down on his belly, stretched flat and sprawling like Jensen had found him five minutes ago. “Tell me to stop and this never happened,” he says, giving Jensen a second to object before his eyes close. And then he goes down on Jensen, arms circling around Jensen’s body as he catches Jensen’s dick with lips and tongue alone, and jesus fucking christ, Cougar, of all people, knows his way around sucking cock.

And he likes it a lot.

There are things they just seem to pick up on without needing to say a single word. Jensen can be working on something that would make an electrical engineer cry by just looking and Cougar won’t need to ask which tool to hand over, it’ll just magically appear in Jensen’s hand so he doesn’t need to break stride; or like during that stint in the desert when no one else saw the way the days wore on Cougar, it’d been Jensen who sat up with him in the dark and made him watch Chocolate Rain over and over to chase away the gloom, and now…. Now Cougar’s hands flatten against Jensen’s back, like he’s trying to pull something more out of Jensen, and with a quiet moan rising in his throat, Jensen reaches out to thread his fingers through Cougar’s hair.

Like ink it slips through his fingers, warm from sun and sweat, impossibly soft from the shower that Jensen remembers Cougar stepping out of, wet and sleek, skin dark against the white of the towel tight around his hips. Jensen shudders as Cougar swallows him, head tilting to the side so he can see taut lips sliding down his dick. His nails run lightly over Cougar’s scalp, and if Jensen sometimes thinks he got the nickname because he’s sneaky and aloof like an overgrown housecat, this seals the deal–Cougar just leans into the touch, his tongue rolling in a slow counterpoint to the lazy bob of his head.

“I’m going to wake up from this any minute now, aren’t I?”

Cougar laughs, the low sound reverberating through Jensen’s whole body, like his dick is a damn tuning fork. But it’s good to hear Cougar laugh, even if it’s because Jensen still can’t wrap his brain around what is going on right here and right now.

“If I really am dreaming, that means you’re totally going to swallow, because how fucking hot is that.” Jensen is not a master of dirty talk by any stretch of the imagination; it’s actually a bit of a miracle that words and not just scattered sounds come off his tongue. Talking though is about the only thing letting him hold onto his sanity, keeping him from trying to fuck deeper into Cougar’s mouth and just blow his load in a few slick thrusts. “Shit, Coug, you have no idea how much I want to see that. Facials are so overrated. It’s all about the–” His fingers slip out of Cougar’s hair, down to the stretch of his throat. Heat rises like waves from the loose knot of his bandanna. Jensen’s heel skids against the dirt. “It’s all about taking one right in the back of the mouth.”

Cougar’s hands drop away from Jensen’s back, and his mouth slides up and away, leaving Jensen’s cock naked and gleaming wet with spit. He’s not quitting though, not with the way he looks up at Jensen, gaze heavy and dark with pleasure. It’s like a fresh kick in the guts when Cougar reaches down to adjust himself and the proof is there that he really is enjoying himself.

“Tell me how you like it,” Cougar says, hands smacking down to the ground again like he’s been told to drop and do fifty. He runs his tongue flat up the length of Jensen’s cock, smiling to himself when a hot rush of blood sends it bouncing to smack against his cheek.

“I–” The problem, Jensen finds, is that he straight up has no idea. No one’s ever asked him that before, and heat creeps up his neck when he honestly says, “I don’t know.”

A thoughtful hum echoes in Cougar’s throat, rich and dangerous, and he takes Jensen back into his mouth a second later, mouth looser this time, sloppy wet sounds drifting up into the silence of late afternoon. Jensen wants to watch, but he can’t, not once the hot slip turns into being buried so deep that Cougar pulls off with a cough and goes back for more like a fucking porn star, and then strong fingers wrap around the very base of his dick and the pink flashes of Cougar’s tongue start to hit the spots that he always aims for with his own hand. Jensen falls back, hat tumbling over his eyes, and he can’t see the sky anymore but it’s filled with stars anyway.

In the end, he really doesn’t care that Cougar spits into the grass, the smear of his come left to dry next to the dull gleam of the spent 300s.

*

Later, the only evidence of the massacre is six tiny bodies lined up in a row on Pooch’s pillow, and the only evidence of one world-changing blowjob is the way Jensen can’t quite look Cougar in the face across the foldout dinner table.

It’s not the sort of weird that’s going to make Jensen avoid him, but it’s the sort of weird that’s going to take time to adjust to, like leaving home for the first time, or walking around in his sister’s heels.

Pooch doesn’t say a word when he pays up, he just pulls out his wallet and counts out the bills. If there’s one thing that will always impress Jensen, it’s that unlike the rest of the world, the Pooch pays his debts in a timely fashion. Jensen grins as he double-checks the count: seven Jacksons and–Jensen eyeballs the portrait on the ten–a pair of Hamiltons. It won’t exactly make a dramatic pile of cash to sleep on, but he’ll make do.

Before he can cram it into his pocket, Cougar leans forward. He holds his hand out, fingers flicking to tell Jensen to hand it over.

“No.” Jensen flattens the cash to his chest, and of course it’s now that he looks Cougar straight in the eye and his stomach does little flips even as he wants to put a fist right in that smug, blowjob giving mouth. “Oh no. No you did not.”

Cougar shrugs effortlessly, and Jensen sputters, trying to find a leg to stand on when the facts are completely not in his favor. “We can make another bet if you want,” Cougar says, striking like a snake to snatch the cash straight out of Jensen’s hand. He stands, and his hip brushes against Jensen’s arm on his way out.

“Why does no one believe me when I say you’re a dirty fucking cheat!” Jensen howls, but he’s grinning too, ‘cause he can feel Cougar’s silent laughter resonating from a room away.